The Haddock-Hofferson Film
by Foxy'sGirl
Summary: Hiccup has known sasquatches are real since he found one in a bear trap when he was fourteen and let it go. No one else in his hometown of Berk agrees, but when a promising piece of footage shows up, he's ready to prove them all wrong. Bigfooter AU. Rated for mild language. Hiccstrid vibes.


**Anonymous**** asked: This is where we do requests right? Um if so, could I suggest Hiccup and Astrid (maybe with Gobber as the seasoned Veteran and Fishlegs and Ruff for some comedy) Troll, Bigfoot or Ghost hunting, either in an AU the Chasing universe or original, I just think that it's a good idea that I haven't seen and I don't feel I have the talent to do it justice with these characters. If you wanna use this great, if not thanks for reading the thought, and all your amazing writing.**

**I'm a soon to be not so secret bigfoot enthusiast, and this was so much fun. **

The Haddock-Hofferson Film

00000

After years of travelling the world on the trail of sasquatches, Hiccup never would have guessed that the most convincing piece of evidence he's ever seen would come from his backyard. He rewinds the video and watches it again, it's practically a Patterson-Gimlin moment, the way that the animal's skin moves under the hair, the way that its muscles flex and stretch and—he pauses it, staring at the squatch's leg.

Scarred and hairless across its calf.

Like it was caught in a bear trap. When it was young and only six feet tall, and Hiccup was a fourteen year old loser exploring the woods behind his dad's house.

He swallows and shuts his laptop, looking towards Gobber in the drivers' seat. The man looks excited, more excited than he does with an average case and Hiccup swallows hard, setting his laptop aside.

"Been a while since we've been home," he starts, even though this van feels more like home, with its infrared cameras and night vision goggles hung on hooks above the cots in the back.

"I always knew there was somethin' in these woods," Gobber clicks his metal hand on the steering wheel. "Somethin' big."

"Aside from my dad, you mean?" Hiccup laughs, drumming his fingers on the open windowsill. "My dad is going to hear me howling in the hills."

"Don' be gettin' embarrassed now. Ye've got the best howl I've ever heard. Everyone at the BFRO is jealous," Gobber chuckles. "Moneymaker wants me te get ye te teach a class."

"Howling is something you're born with," Hiccup chews on the inside of his cheek. "Fishlegs is supposed to be meeting us right up here. He got the footage right by mile marker 12."

Gobber pulls over and parks in the shoulder and Hiccup lingers a moment too long in the passenger seat, looking at the small green sign, tucked into the shadows of a thatch of overgrown pine trees. Fishlegs was never an outsider quite like he was, and the fact that Fish is out in the woods, filming a squatch means that maybe something has changed, doesn't it?

Hiccup hears his cousin's distinctive guffaw, still recognizable after years away and sighs. No, Berk will never change. Berk is an island of hostility in the middle of the squatchiest forest anyone has ever seen.

He climbs out of the car and slings his backpack over his shoulder, following Gobber's uneven footprints in the mud along the side of the road and turning onto a deer trail to face his worst nightmare.

"And the gang is _all_ here."

Ruffnut and Tuffnut are there, of course, older but mostly the same aside from Tuffnut's dreadlocks. Snotlout is shorter than Hiccup remembers, but posturing just as much as he always has, laughing too loudly at Fishlegs, who's bigger than ever and clutching a video camera in a fist.

Astrid is leaning against a tree, away from the rest of the group but still included, like she always was. Beautiful, like she always has been. Bizarrely wearing hiking boots. She looks at him and frowns, pushing off of the tree and crossing her arms.

"Hiccup?" She narrows her eyes and might be _confused_ for a moment and he looks away before it burns him, walking over to Fishlegs like this is any other case. But it's not any other case, it's the most promising case of his life.

"So, this is where you got the footage?" He asks too loudly, even though Gobber is already reprimanding the camera and aiming it experimentally at the trees across the road.

"Yes, it was walking—"

"No, let's tell the real story," Snotlout steps forward, shouldering Hiccup and grinning, as cocky as ever. "I was wearing a suit and I walked across the road like this," he does some bizarre little stride and Hiccup steps away from him.

"Looking at the trees, I think the squatch was a few feet taller than you," Hiccup steps up to talk to Fishlegs, trying to ignore the hair rising along the back of his neck as Astrid shoves Snotlout aside and joins the smaller comparatively serious circle.

She was never _mean_ to him like the rest of them. She didn't laugh when he told everyone about the squatch behind his house. Sure, she pulled him aside with a death grip on his arm and told him in no uncertain terms that he sounded crazy and he was going to get himself beaten up, but it didn't read like a threat.

Ruff and Tuff laugh about something and stomp around in the leaves behind them and Astrid steps closer, scoffing over her shoulder. Hiccup heard she left town for college, went to some Ivy League in the Northeast and came home for a year to work and save up to medical school.

Who is he kidding? He researched this.

"I filmed him crossing the road from the other side, then slowing down about forty percent when he hit the bushes." Fishlegs is flushed and Hiccup doesn't need the video anymore. He knows what it looks like when someone actually saw something.

"How long ago was this?" Hiccup steps back, biting his lip when his shoulder glances across Astrid's. She's taking the camera from Gobber and looking at it, muttering something under her breath that sounds like _hoax_.

"Two days ago."

"That recently?" Hiccup looks around, back towards the van at Gobber's footprints, so well preserved in the shallow mud. Hiccup didn't leave much of an indentation, but there's not much mass to him anyway. "Before or after the rain?"

"What rain?" Snotlout asks, staring at the sky. "It's not raining, Hiccup. Have you seen your dad yet?"

"Before or after the rain, Fish?" Hiccup repeats his question, trying to forget that Berk is three miles away.

"After, it rained the night before—"

"Gobber, we might have prints," Hiccup lights up, looking across the road at the muddy mouth of a trail that the squatch must have come from. He looks both ways before jogging across the highway and pausing on the curb, lighting up at the trail of three or four large indentations in the mud.

"Now those are beautiful," Gobber claps him on the shoulder and takes out his camera, snapping away at the prints. "We've got toes! They still have toes!"

"Yeah, and they're probably the same size as the sasquatch feet at the costume store downtown, because it's a _hoax_." Astrid is standing right beside him, hands on her hips.

00000

No one comes to the town hall meeting that afternoon, and it's not exactly shocking, because this is Berk. Famously open-minded Berk.

Gobber leaves after an hour to…well, to visit with Hiccup's father, but going home without evidence feels like a cop out. Maybe tomorrow, if tonight in the woods goes as well as he's hoping. Those tracks were fresh and good and _big_. It's one thing to look for a seven footer in a national park, but completely different to seek out a nine footer who—well, he has evidence that this thing has hovered around Berk since it was just a juvenile.

The town hall isn't so much a hall as a greasy spoon and he eventually sits down in a booth, ordering a cup of coffee and a plate of fries to pick at until it's late enough to justify preparing for the night. It's just him and Gobber and Fishlegs, the twins and Snotlout tried to bring guns along and Astrid…well, the day that Astrid goes on a sasquatch hunt is the day—

"So. When are we leaving?"

Astrid slides into the booth across from him and takes one of his fries, resting her elbows on the table.

"When are we leaving where?"

"To go look for your monster." She curls her lip and squirts some ketchup out onto the edge of his plate, dipping another fry in it.

"You're not coming along, are you?"

"Exactly, you don't want me there," she glares at him. "Because you three are going to go out there and _see_ something and take some doctored photo and bring it back here and pretend that you hit the jackpot."

"No, no—it's not that I don't _want _you there, because I do want you there but…Why are you coming? Again?"

She blinks at him.

"So that you can't cook up some hoax."

"I don't need to 'cook up a hoax', I have evidence." He bristles and looks around at the empty diner, hoping for someone to witness his imminent murder. "And I didn't say I'd share my fries."

"Oh," she scoots the plate back towards him and picks up a menu. "I skipped breakfast to follow Fish out there."

"Because you care this much about me finding a bigfoot out here?" He nudges the plate back towards her, a bit sheepish. "And you can share my fries, thanks for _asking_."

"Can I have some fries?" She reaches for the plate and he gives her a stern look. "Please."

"I just said you could," he takes a sip of his coffee and swirls the dregs around in the bottom of the mug. He's going to need more of that to stay awake all night. "You know, I don't normally let skeptics come out into the woods with us."

"Right, because you'll get caught in a lie." She's beautiful when she's smug, eating another one of his fries. It's every high school dream he never realized and he swallows, sitting up a little straighter.

"No, because you scare them off."

"Oh, with the truth?"

"No, with your horrible attitude and lack of curiosity," he rolls his eyes and drains the rest of his coffee. "You already know you're going to see a bear, so what's the point in trying? It could write you a damn message and you'd call it a coincidence. I'd avoid you too." His eyes widen and he tries to backtrack, "if I were a sasquatch. I'd avoid skeptics like you if I were a squatch."

"I think I'd accept a written message as proof."

"You say that now. Later you'll be crying grizzly bear, because somehow a grizzly bear this far south is more reasonable than—"

"Than a mythical creature?" She raises an eyebrow and dabs up a few of the french fry crumbs with the tip of her finger, popping it into her mouth in a way that makes him look away.

It hits him, really hits him, that he's sitting in Berk's diner across from Astrid Hofferson and she's _talking_ to him. The last few years suddenly feel like a dream, an intense, far ranging dream that he's just waking up from.

"You know, gorillas were considered to be mythical creatures until 1847. Explorers would see them and then the rest of the world would call them crazy. Gorillas were rumored to be 'hairy man beasts with a habit of abducting and raping women'," he says the last part in an accent attempting to be scary and Astrid half-smiles at him. "But that's not even the real kicker, the mountain gorilla in central Africa was a myth until 1902. They _believed_ in gorillas but couldn't believe there was another, larger species in a different part of the continent."

"Africa is a lot less settled than America. I think we would have come across one by now."

"Gorillas are smart, but they aren't smart enough to avoid people for any sustained period of time."

"So, do you empathize with the mythical sasquatch for avoiding people better than you've managed to avoid Berk?" She leans forward on her elbows and narrows her eyes at him. Those blue eyes that he never really managed to stop thinking about. Not entirely.

"I think I'm going to need some ice for that burn." He shakes his head, "what? Are you abandoning med-school to become a psychologist? I didn't say psychiatrist because you seem to be more interested in inflicting damage than fixing it."

"How'd you know I was going to med-school?"

He freezes.

"Oh, I don't know—I must have just heard that somewhere. Facebook…the internet…"

"Yeah. Right." She shrugs and looks at the empty plate between them. "I'm still hungry. Do you want anything?"

00000

Gobber and Fishlegs go together to one side of the wide canyon with the most deer activity in the area. Hiccup considers asking Fishlegs to join them full time, if he's this full of useful stats, but any of those strategic thoughts melt entirely when he finds himself alone with Astrid, hiking up a deer trail towards the opposite crest of the canyon. He's never actually felt ridiculous in his night vision goggles before, but he finds himself slouching like he can somehow hide the massive black strap cutting across the back of his hair. Like she's looking at the back of his hair.

Who is he kidding? She's not looking at anything, she can't see because he took away her flashlight like a _nerd_ and…

"Jesus, Hiccup. You're supposed to be telling me about tree branches."

He looks back and she's rubbing the side of her face.

"Oh. Sorry. I should have grabbed the other set of goggles, I wasn't thinking—"

"It's fine. Just tell me about the next one," she looks around at the woods and crosses her arms. He wishes he'd told her to bright a heavier jacket. His hands drop to offer her his jacket but freeze when she smirks at him. "Those are pretty ridiculous, by the way."

"Right, I sacrifice my rugged good looks for night vision. It's how it goes." He turns back forward and starts walking again. "Branch."

"So you have noticed."

"Yes, I noticed the branch. Perks of my ridiculous night vision goggles."

"No, I meant you noticed your 'rugged good looks'." She laughs and he thinks she's mocking him for a too long second of silence. "You…well, you didn't fill out but _something_ happened. I don't think you had that jaw in high school."

"What?" He stops and turns around, freezing when she's a lot closer behind him than he remembers.

"Can I try on the goggles?"

"They're very delicate—ouch."

She yanks them off of his head anyway, pulling them over her own and adjusting them across her eyes.

"Much better."

"Oh, I'm so glad that you can see my blindness—"

"Wait." She freezes, head turned barely to the right and something stiff in her tone makes him stop. "I—I see something."

"Are you being serious right now?" He looks in the same direction as her and blinks, willing his eyes to adjust to the night.

"No, Hiccup, I'm joking." She hisses, pressing the goggles closer to her face like they're binoculars. "There's something over there. I think it's a bear."

He fumbles for the infrared camera and turns it on, wincing at the bright screen in the dark. He presses it against his chest and scans the forest where she's looking, pausing at a bright red blob. He presses record and starts breathing harder.

It's not even really a blob when he zooms in. There are arms, one long and covered in orange and yellow hair, stretched up against a tree. Two legs and a scar on one of them, warmer than the fur around it.

"Is it a bear?" Astrid whispers, pushing the goggles up on her face and leaning in to look at the screen. "That's—How is it standing?"

"It's not a bear," he shakes his head, flinching when her fist connects with his arm. The shape moves, arm swinging from the tree above its head to blend back into his side. "It noticed you hitting me."

"Ok, who's out there?" Astrid calls out, hands on her hips. "We see you!"

It moves again, taking half a step back behind the tree.

"Stop, you're scaring it—"

"Then it's not any sort of _monster_—"

"They aren't monsters, they're just animals." He snaps at her, firm hand landing against her shoulder and anchoring her to the path. "Stop scaring it. We're in its territory as is."

She stares at him for a moment before sliding the goggles back into place, "Ok. What do you need me to do?"

"This is stupid," he looks at her out of the corner of his eye, adjusting the camera against his chest. "But hit me again."

"Hit you again?"

"It reacted before. So hit me again—not so _hard_." He glares at her and shrugs his shoulder to make sure it still works.

"You said to hit you—it's moving."

"Shit," he looks back down at the camera and the blob is closer, so much closer that he has to zoom out slightly. Astrid is shivering beside him, an anxious sort of shiver like a horse in the starting gate of the derby.

"What are you going to do now?" She's whispering, and it hits him that he's going to have an ally tomorrow when he shows up at his dad's house for breakfast. He won't be alone crying squatch this time.

"Something crazy." He hands her the camera and steps off of the trail into the brush, hand outstretched towards the big, dark shape.

00000


End file.
